Last spring, my friend Paul texted me trying to recruit Juan Pablo to join his team for a long, crazy bike tour called “Ride the Rockies.” Paul had not met Juan Pablo at that point, but the grape vine had informed him about their shared love of bicycles. He and our...

The bicycle is one of human kind’s greatest inventions. It is a symbol of modernity: you can’t have bicycles without industry. Although nowadays one can ride in the dirt hills and mountains, in paved country roads, the bicycle is originally an urban phenomenon; it...

“Or be a child again and play on a more or less apocalyptic soccer team.” – Roberto Bolaño In April of this year Laura and I traveled to Oregon to visit Laura’s brother Jim and his fiancé (now wife) Katie. Laura flew into Portland from Tucson, I flew in from San...

Beer. Wine. Bicycles. Mountains. Camping. Hiking. These are the things that come to mind when I think about the state of Oregon. My older brother (Jim) lived back and forth between Eugene and Corvallis for many years, and I was fortunate enough to visit him several...

You know the movie trope where the character goes to the airport and flies to the next location available? In early October, a couple weeks after Juan Pablo moved to California, we decided to do just that (well, sort of: we bought tickets on the internet rather than...